Perhaps the best example of Bradbury\u2019s feeling on technology came not from dystopian Fahrenheit<\/em>, but a short story he wrote called The Veldt<\/em>. Two unwitting parents spoil their kids with a virtual reality nursery where the children create an African savanna patrolled by lions. The kids love their holodeck and revile their parents who threaten to unplug it. Fantasy spoiler: The veldt comes to life, and the kids lock their parents inside where the virtual lions devour them.<\/p>\n That’s Bradburyian tech endgame. To take over, to destroy the connections of blood with ties of wire and LCD interface. He hated the net. He told the New York Times that technology is \u201cmeaningless; it\u2019s not real. It\u2019s in the air somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n Logical for an ancient bibliophile. But the internet isn\u2019t air. It\u2019s fire. The Atlantic<\/em> touched on the internet\u2019s assault on the plodding written word in an article titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?<\/a>“:<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/techcitement.comadmin\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Fahenheit451.jpg\" "\\"Fahenheit451\\"")
Some of this technology Bradbury envisioned back in 1953. Consider thimble radios in Fahrenheit<\/em> that lull Montag\u2019s wife into a stupor, shutting out depressing distractions like her husband. According to Technovelgy.com<\/em><\/a>, these thimble radios were designed in 1959, which is only six years after the apparently prophetic novel’s publication. Today, everyone blocks out someone now and again — perhaps often — through the use of smartphones and tablets. In Fahrenheit 451,<\/em> people also speak to each other through screens, watch television incessantly, and so behave in anti-social, detrimental ways our Facebook generation takes for granted.<\/p>\n